Lyn Martin

I’m surprised at how much I disliked this book. It was the writing, above all, that put me off. I read somewhere that Kristen Hannah started out as a romance writer, and the prose struck me as very much in that vein: repetitive, mundane and cliched, even as she describes the horrors of war, heartbreaks and mental health breakdowns. I also think it unlikely that a young woman from a wealthy, socially connected family would have gone to Vietnam as a nurse, or even gone into nursing in the first place. The author obviously researched the war, the effects of PTSD, and the social upheavals of the times, and she did a fair job describing these things, so why not cast a more believable Frankie? Since the book is titled The Women, I thought it would focus on the wartime experiences of several female characters, but the other nurses are one dimensional and serve the plot simply as Frankie’s friends. I’m not sure if this is the first novel to focus on the experiences of the women who went to Vietnam. But if it is, I don’t think such a strong emphasis on romantic entanglements does the subject justice. And the ending! Right out of a romance novel.